Saturday, September 17, 2011

Su Beng celebrated the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival at the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan (ART) base in Taipei on September 9th. It was a potluck celebration or all the volunteers and supporters of the ART. They expected about 100 people to show up.

It was a very merry occasion.

Professor Tsay, Chairman of the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan (ART), Su Beng and Bin Hong.

Su Beng sang a song called "Dancing Girl" (舞女), which was popular in the 1980s. People of Su Beng's generation would be familiar with dance halls which were once popular in Taiwan, decades ago. In these dance halls were "Dancing Girls" who's job it was to entertain and dance with the mostly male patrons. These women were in effect like escorts. The lyrics of "Dancing Girl" describes the sadness of a dancing girl who has to dance with several different men a night. The song is a metaphor for Taiwan's which has fallen under the control of a string of foreign colonial rulers.

He also sang "Taiwan Nationalism" (a song that he himself wrote) and danced.

About Me

Since 2004 I've been documenting the life of Su Beng- a Taiwanese nonagenarian Marxist revolutionary and lifelong Taiwan independence activist, who spent 7 years working undercover for the Chinese Communists, tried to assassinate Chiang Kai-Shek, and wrote "Taiwan's 400 Years of History." Follow along as I unravel and explain the elusive contradictions of this man's life story. It's my job as Su Beng's biographer to tell this story of one man's idealism, passion, heroism, and humanism. I believe it is a story that will inspire and inform. As a first time biographer, I'll also share some of my reflections on my role as Su Beng's biographer.